Robots may operate within a space to perform particular tasks. For example, robots may be deployed in factories, homes, offices, and healthcare facilities, among others. Servant robots may be tasked with navigating within the operating space, locating objects, and manipulating objects. For example, a robot may be commanded to find an object within the operating space, pick up the object, and move the object to a different location within the operating space.
Robots commonly utilize a vision-based object recognition method to recognize objects within the operating space for navigation, and to find and manipulate objects. Prior to manipulating an object, the robot will ideally recognize that the target object is the type of object that it should manipulate. Object recognition methods such as edge detection, corner detection, feature extraction, and others may be used to recognize objects within the operating space. Object recognition methods may also be used outside of the robotics and vision system fields. For example, object recognition methods may be used to categorize images into a categorization system. Object recognition methods may compare data or features of an image under consideration to data or features of reference images stored in a library. When a correlation between the data or features of the image under consideration and the data or features of a reference image(s) is found, the image under consideration may be categorized in a category corresponding to the reference image(s). However, the library may have insufficient data regarding particular types or categories of objects such that the robot (or object recognition system) cannot categorize a target object or image under consideration with a high degree of confidence.
Accordingly, a need exists for alternative methods for recognizing a category of an object and robots utilizing the same.